ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS’ VALUE ASSESSMENT OF ENTRY LEVEL IT SKILLS AND TOPICS: A COMPARISON OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CPA FIRMS AND INDUSTRY/GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS

Current accounting professionals were surveyed regarding their perceived value of information systems (IS) classes in preparing accounting students for the work place. The respondents were requested to identify relative importance, in terms of depth of coverage of IS topics in university courses. The topics and skills included programming languages, hardware, office software, database, networks, operating systems, project management, web design and others. The differences between accountants that worked for CPA firms and accountants that worked in industry were analyzed. The results will be useful in developing IS curriculum content for accounting information courses (AIS) and in IS courses that support accounting majors.